Amazon Sumerian FAQs

General

Q: What is Amazon Sumerian? Amazon Sumerian lets you create and run 3D, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) applications. You can build immersive and interactive scenes that run on AR and VR, mobile devices, and your web browser. Whether you are non-technical, a web or mobile developer, or have years of 3D development experience, getting started with Sumerian is easy. You can design scenes directly from your browser and because Sumerian is a web-based application you can quickly add connections in your scenes to existing AWS services.

Q: How do I access Amazon Sumerian? Amazon Sumerian is in Preview. Visit here to apply.

Q: What browsers does Amazon Sumerian Support? Amazon Sumerian supports the following browsers for editing: Firefox Quantum 57.0 and Chrome 62. Sumerian will run on Edge and Safari browsers, but users may experience a slightly degraded experience with fallback support from WebGL 2 to WebGL.

To view a scene in VR, Firefox Quantum 57.0 is recommended.

Q: What is WebVR? WebVR is an open specification that makes it possible to connect a VR headset to your computer and experience VR through your web browser. We chose WebVR because it makes it easy to get into VR experiences no matter what device you have.

To view an Amazon Sumerian scene in WebVR, you will need a headset and compatible browser.

Q: What is WebGL? WebGL (Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API used for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics in a browser.

Q: Can I use Amazon Sumerian on my mobile devices? Yes. You can view scenes that you published from Amazon Sumerian's editor on a mobile device. Currently, Sumerian does not support editing scenes on mobile devices.

Q: What are Sumerian Hosts? Amazon Sumerian helps you design and assemble scenes to create rich 3D environments. Within those environments, you can use Sumerian Hosts to create and add animated 3D characters to your scenes. Hosts can guide your users through a scene by narrating scripts or answering questions. You can customize the Host’s characteristics such as gender, voice, and language. Using Sumerian’s integration with Amazon Lex and Amazon Polly, you can enable engaging spoken interactions between Hosts and your users. Polly lets you input text which your Host can speak in lifelike voices across a variety of languages. Using Lex’s automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding capabilities, you can build the conversational interface for your Host that allows it to understand and respond to users’ speech.

Learn more about adding a Host to your Amazon Sumerian scene by following our tutorials.

Q: Does Amazon Sumerian support Virtual Reality (VR)? Yes. Because VR is a rapidly evolving technology, we've built Amazon Sumerian's VR support on top of WebVR, which allows us to quickly add support for new HMDs. Sumerian currently supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Google Daydream, and mobile devices.

Q: Does Amazon Sumerian support Augmented Reality (AR)? Yes. Amazon Sumerian supports ARKit with support for ARCore coming soon. To get started developing for iOS with Sumerian, you can follow the tutorials found here.

Q: Does Sumerian integrate with other AWS services? Yes. We have integrated a base set of AWS services directly into the Sumerian interface. For example, you can choose an Amazon Polly persona and attach a script to a Sumerian host to make the Host speak.

Sometimes you may want to fetch real-time data from other solutions built on AWS and embed the data into your scene. With Amazon Sumerian you can configure your scene with an Amazon Cognito pool and use the AWS SDK to fetch data from the AWS services you are already using and add it to your scene.

Q: How is Sumerian different than Amazon Lumberyard?Amazon Lumberyard and Amazon Sumerian are complimentary services that help customers design, build, and deploy 3D content. Sumerian and Lumberyard do share similarities in feature sets but serve different customer types. Sumerian uses technologies like JavaScript, HTML, WebGL, and WebVR to enable web and mobile developers to deploy experiences to target platforms through web browsers.

Amazon Sumerian

Amazon Lumberyard

Technologies

JavaScript, HTML, WebGL, WebVR

C++, Lua, DirectX, OpenGL

Platform Examples

Web Browsers (e.g. Chrome and Firefox)

PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, Xbox, Playstation

Experience Types

Focused, supports latest web browser technology

Big, complex, and/or high visual fidelity

Distribution Examples

The web

Steam, Amazon.com, Google Play

Pricing

Q: Is there a free trial for Amazon Sumerian? Yes. You can try AWS Sumerian for free in your first year of using the service. The Sumerian free tier lets you create a 50MB published scene that receives 100 views per month for free in the first year.

Q: How much does Amazon Sumerian cost? Please see our pricing page for the latest information.

Support

Q: What kind of support is available for Amazon Sumerian? All Amazon Sumerian customers have access to documentation, tutorials, and prebuilt scene templates and assets. Additional support for Sumerian is available via AWS Premium Support plans.

Q: How do I submit feedback or suggestions? Please email us your feedback.